Five Simple Tips to Hide Your Illiterature

The weather is hot, the sky is clear and for two glorious weeks, you’re allowed to switch off that old thinking cap and just recline blissfully into the blue of some relaxation. But while you pamper your inner goddess with some much-deserved TLC and maybe a king prawn or two (yum!) be wary that the book you dive into could be illiterature. As alluring as a millionaire with a sadomasochistic streak, illiterature has all the celebby intrigue, Vuitton wallets and steamy sex puns you love to lap up, but the other babes of the beach will totally judge you for it (so not fair).

If your summer read has a hot pink cover, a fun-tonne of chatty parenthesises, was written by and/or about a magazine editor, or comes with a recommendation from anyone who could arguably be compared with Paris Hilton, it might be illiterature. Which is so fine, because I mean, we’re all girls right? And we all know that if something makes you feel sick and dirty at first, then all it’ll take is a firm hand and a bit of force before it wakes something inside you and sets off fireworks in your fan-wa.

But unfortunately that pilot with a dark past can’t hold everyone hard by the back of the neck, forcing the pixie-like tips of their noses to touch the pillowy pages of a steamy fresh-to-print best selling e-book until they read it, and love it, so there are still millions of judgemental B’s who just don’t get it.

You could stand proud and defend your case, but why argue for your character (development) when you could have a bit of fun sneaking around instead, huh?

Here are five totally simple and so-very-secret tips you can use this summer so that nobody knows your dirty little illiterature secret.

1) Cover up – No, not your bikini silly. That’s allowed to be a hot pink striped Missoni number that goes perfectly with your new neon shade of nail polish, sits just so on your bony hips (your friends are worried, seriously you are so thin) and shows off your honey coloured tan. No, you should cover up your book cover. It even works with paperbacks! Just slip the dust jacket off something scary and oh-so-serious so that no one will question you (The Plague is a great choice!), slip it over your slice of reading-delish, and it’ll be your little secret. Just make sure you don’t get that cover upside down! Whoopsies!

2) Irony is the best medicine – “Oh this old thing, I’m reading it as a joke.” How funny for you to be so down with the times that you can consume something so silly and like, totally know it, then you can slip off down the beach and ironically get buzzed with your ironically dolphin shaped vibrator. Flipper can keep his beak shut.

3) Private beach – Treat yourself to the luxe life and read out of sight of everyone else. You’ve earned it, with your busy dream job/degree that’s secretly not all it’s cracked up to be. And hey, maybe while you’re lying their prone and alone, your inner goddess all fired up, your dream man’s golden pecks will jog right by. Just make sure you bury the book in the sand before you talk to him.

4) An e-reader – Let’s face it, pages are no fun unless they’re glossy anyway, so why not just take that to the next level and get yourself an e-reader. You’ll be able to find so many more amazing authors that way too. Authors who think freely and uninhibitedly like you do, with no sulky sub-editors downing their amazing gifts.

5) Write your own – You know, you have a creative light inside you. And that princess of expression deserves to share her story. And I mean a literal princess, with slender long legs, and caramel hair that falls in waves past her delicately blushed cheeks. But she doesn’t know she’s a princess, until she’s whisked from her high pressure, but high glamour day job as a publicist and into a world of intrigue, with a mysterious tall and dark haired man with a rich accent, an exotic location and something to do with a diamond necklace. This is making sense, right?